


The Shadows Betwixt His Bones

by YouLookGoodInLeather



Series: 30 Days of Dark Fandom Challenge (ACOTAR) [4]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Azriel runs from his feelings, Dark, Darkness, Flashbacks, Hair-pulling, Heavy BDSM, M/M, POV Lucien (ACoTaR), Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Tamlin/Lucien, Violent Sex, re-enacted abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 08:47:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouLookGoodInLeather/pseuds/YouLookGoodInLeather
Summary: Azriel cannot risk caring, for he knows what happens to those unfortunate enough to have been loved by his blackhole heart. He sees himself as an all-consuming fire, and all he can do is save the others from himself.But Lucien has never been able to resist a burning building, and this isn't like it was with Tamlin. This time, he has a choice.





	The Shadows Betwixt His Bones

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt: Luzriel: Darkness, Sadism/Masochism, Hair Pulling, Smut**
> 
>  
> 
> Very, very trigger warning heavy, please, please, PLEASE do not read if this will upset you. The word 'stop' is used in reference to flashbacks, but is not the designated safeword. 
> 
> Also loosely part of the 'And So He is To The Other' Series, as well as fitting into another fanfic's universe.

“He’s missing,” is all Rhys says. His wings are out, everything too fucked up right now for him to concentrate on concealing them. Whorls of night curl around his ankles, snaking his trembling wrists as if he is unconsciously trying to mimic the one he lost. The one they both lost.

“Where?” Lucien asks. He needs nothing else; He’s felt this coming for months, ever since he met the man born and raised in darkness. Even when he was falling in love like a fool, he knew what was coming.

And it never stopped him. Why did he always fall for the monsters?

“I don’t know.” Rhys’ knuckles are bone white, his fingers gripping the balcony railing as if it is the only thing holding him up. Above, the thunderous crashing of Cassian destroying things echoes down around them. Even Nesta, who lies kneeling and begging outside of his door, cannot console him.

Perhaps he should pity the warrior, but Lucien can only envy him. If only he had the liberty of being free to unleash his grief. Sadly, Tamlin taught him exactly what that would earn him, and even if his new lover is a world apart from the old, he’s spent centuries learning to bundle every sensation up tight inside of himself. No matter how much chaos is inhabiting his chest right now, it’s not so simple as to just cast those learned behaviours aside. So he is left to act only as he knows how.

“I’ll find him,” he says, looking past reality to feverishly work through the most likely locations. Rhys sighs.

“I had a feeling you’d say that.”

“You knew?” Lucien pushes his mental debate aside for a moment to look up at the man he now accepts at his new High Lord. At the man whom his lover is even more loyal to, someone he has been infinitely jealous of. Somehow this… sets them apart. He knows he will be the one to set chase.

It is Rhys who is bound to his duties, his court, his people. Lucien has always belonged to another, and a singular another only. Jes. Tamlin.

Now Azriel.

“I might have been a little self absorbed recently,” Rhys admits with the kind of smile only someone who has been hurt down to his soul can wear. “But I still know when one of my best friends is in love.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Lucien mumbles. It is the way these things always play out for him; unrequited obsession is his speciality. He wonders if he inherited it from his mother. Or worse, his father.

“Trust me, Luce. Az hasn’t been like this since the war. And ever since he lost… He hasn’t risked so much on someone ever, not even close. Until you.”

“He hasn’t risked a thing.” Lucien tears through the last few months, all those nights of shadows invading his bed as he, desperate and needy for touch, opened the door every time. At how Az would bury himself into him time and time again without so much as a word, without so much as glancing his way during the light of day.

“I think we both know,” No matter how hard he tries to block out what he doesn’t want to think of, what brings guilt and fear flooding into his chest, he remembers the soft kisses to the forehead at the end, the way he was held until they were both certain he was okay, the stolen kisses in alcoves when no one was looking, “that that isn’t quite true.”

“I didn’t ask for this.” Tears are streaming down his cheeks like he’s some idiot, some weakling who hasn’t been through hell and back. “I didn’t make him chose me.”

“I’m not blaming you. I’m not saying this is okay. Nothing about this is okay. But if anyone can help him through this, it’s you.”

All of a sudden Rhys is close to him, too close when every nerve in his body feels like it is aflame. He wants to run back to the darkness he’s come to know and love, but he knows himself better than that. If there is a burning building, he can never turn his back. It’s the most ridiculous of saviour complexes, but it’s all he has left.

“I know where he is,” he says. Because he’s an idiot, and there’s a fire calling.

“I know.” Rhys is squeezing his shoulder, hugging him, patting his arm, which would be really appreciated if he could properly feel any of it. “I’m certain he wants you to find him.” Lucien smiles, his stomach sinking down, down, down.

“They always do.”

 

* * *

 

Lucien closes the door on the snowstorm raging outside, too numb to shiver. His breath is a cloud before him, all he can see until he calls flame to his fingertips to cast flickering light around the castle. Even in the dim light, he can make out the silver strings of numerous spiderwebs, the way damp drips down the stone walls, smothers the floors.

What looks like blood is dripping down from the ceiling. Lucien knows better. He crosses to the wall and touches his fingertips to the dribbles of ebony. They pass straight through, disappearing from sight before emerging from the other side of the leaking shadows, the only sensation that of unshakeable cold.

He’s never seen it this bad before.

“Az?” His voice bounces off the walls, a hollow cacophony to remind him just how vast this place is. All that answers him is the slow descent of the shadows, a breeze rattling through the cracks in the decaying walls. No voices save those he remembers.

Last time he’d been here, his fingers had been entwined with the other’s, Az’s shoulder pressed close to his.

“Are you sure you want to… see?” He’d asked him.

“Yes,” Lucien had responded, an eternal sucker for abysses. “It’s a part of you. I want to know.”

He’d never appreciated just how gentle Azriel had made the experience for him. Last time, the torches were lit, hell, the bat had even _cleaned_ the place for him.

Now, there is no pretence. No illusion of closure, no pretending that the healing is concluded. The walls seep darkness like open wounds all too fittingly, but though they raise chills on the back of Lucien’s neck, they serve as a reminder of why he is here. For, however he might resent it, a tight, suffocating heat clamps down upon his ribcage, spills up his throat. He _cares_.

Why does he always have to care?

“Azriel?” He calls down the halls, forcing himself to move. He wanders corridor after corridor. Though he keeps his expression perfectly schooled into calm, his fire gives him away, sputtering on and off which each tumultuous roll of his stomach, each wave of nausea flooding his throat. “Az! It’s me. I’m…”

Truthfully, he does not know what to say, but his bones know words aren’t going to fix this. That never has been the nature of their relationship. Even soaked in sunlight, they have always spoken through limbs, explored one another deep in gazes met and ignored. The voices they know best for one another are barely voices at all, merely gasps, panting, rasping pleas, moans that herald in the dawn so that they might be set free from this consumption they’ve fallen into.

Memory guides him up stairs, through great halls, up towers until he finds that fateful room. Though his flames burn strong, they illuminate naught. The darkness here is thick, clamorous, impenetrable. It is all too fitting that his response is a racing pulse, a tug in the pit of his groin, an urge to throw himself into the danger he can pretend is unknown, but the taste stains his tongue as strong as the blood they have drawn from one another ever has.

“I’m coming in,” he says, stroking the door to release the softness he feels, the desire to heal, for he knows such tenderness will be buried in an instant once he enters. No sound gives him a response, only a shiver of bitter freezing that ripples throughout the shadows that claim this hellplace.

Twisting the door handle, he hesitates when a rush of cold air whistles out at the slightest opening. It is colder than even the tsundras of Winter, the kind even Kallias himself would avoid unless he had a death wish. What that says about Lucien when he enters anyway, he tries not to deduce. Jes, Andras, Tamlin, they have all proven one thing: he cannot resist a death sentence.

Not too surprisingly, he cannot see a thing as he steps inside. He tries to recall its dimensions from his daylight visit. It shouldn’t be too hard; The room is hardly elaborate, closer to a broom closet than a bedroom, although it was just that to his lover for his entire childhood. Reflections of his own shallow breathing drift back to him as they ricochet off of the intimate walls, and for just a moment, he doubts himself. Perhaps he has the wrong ro-

The thought is cut short just like his shaky breath as a hand grabs him by the throat and slams him back against a wall. No words, only squeezing, an invasion of shadows given physical form encircling his body to trap him where hands are not enough. Flashbacks of being pinned just this way to bedsheets, to balconies, to even the back alley of Rita’s leave him stupidly aroused given how he might be about to die.

 _Az_ , he says, not aloud, but in his head, willing it to the other. The games of daemati have never been his forte, but it’s different with his lovers. Whatever it is about the way he drowns in their existence so completely, it leaves him half embedded in their consciousness, like a leech. He just hopes that this time, it might give him some advantage. _Az, it’s me. I’m here. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay._

Whether in response to his attempts at telepathy, or born from fury, Lucien finds himself dragged higher up the wall, dangling off of the floor by his jugular. It is a relief they never relied on speech to communicate, when all he can do is gag and fight for air. Oxygen deprivation drives him dizzy. He cannot see, not even the darkness now, for everything is spinning and blotching with light. All he can do is beg mentally for mercy.

Release. Fingers unbind his throat and drop him to the floor, leaving him slumped against the wall. Though still he sees only darkness, he can hear the other storming in their claustrophobic confinement, his powerful wings scraping against the walls. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he growls, his voice unlike his own, crackled with that darkness he is so talented at keeping locked up in his chest. Too bad Lucien is used to deciphering it, all whilst at the height of ecstasy, or whilst buried into bedding.

“Don’t bother acting for me,” Lucien snips back, glaring at where he thinks his lover may be. “I know what this is. It’s childish and petulant and-” Shadows ensnaring his throat cut him off, but he knows them well, and knows even better how to slip their noose. “I’m not here for you to tell me you’re a monster. I’m here to bring you home.”

“This _is_ my home,” Az’s voice answers in the darkness, disembodied and echoing as if they stood in a hall, not a prison cell. “This is the only place I deserve to be.” Hatred colours his voice, yet Lucien knows it is aimed not at him. It has always been internal.

“You’re not a monster, Az. You’re not _them_.” Laughter fills the room.

“Not a monster? How can you, of all people, say that?”

Pushing himself up from the floor, Lucien is done with chasing the unrepentant. The impossible. The ones whom he knows will die. This is the first time he has truly been able to change something, and he will _not_ let that one chance pass him by. He owes it to them all, even Tamlin, who cloistered all those hopeful chances close to his chest, determinedly out of reach.

If Az is offering him a chance at salvation, he won’t run away this time. He’s learned that much from Andras. He might be the same person, but he’s stronger now. Maybe this time, he doesn’t have to punish himself.

His outstretched hand brushing leather, he grabs. He seizes the other, hanging onto his chest and drives him backwards, shoving him wings and all against the stone. “You’re more than that, you bastard. You are _better_ than them,” he snarls, refusing to relent as Az tries to pry him off. Shaking him, as if he really could shake sense into him, Lucien keeps him caged. “It is your _choice_ , Az. Stop- stop acting like we’re all doomed to play these stupid, fucked up parts. Because I’m fucking done with mine. I’m not anyone’s victim anymore. And you do _not_ have to become them. I’ve seen that much.”

He is outmatched. He is flipped and forced into the corner, pinned by a body pressed flush with his. “I have hurt you, over and over again. I have _ruined_ you, night after night. And you-”

“And you have stopped, every time I’ve asked,” Lucien snaps back, wrestling to regain control, to touch the man he refuses to leave behind. “You aren’t Tamlin. And you certainly aren’t your father.”

“No,” Az says thickly, digust dripping from every syllable of his speech. “I’m worse.”

“You have every reason, every ability, and every opportunity to be just that,” Lucien says, real quiet now, squinting to try and see the other, to try and find a way to kiss him because Cauldron dammit it it is ripping his insides apart to hear another hate themselves quite as much as he does. “And yet you refuse. You fight for others. You protect people. You _care_. And I know you think that gets people killed-”

“It always has done.”

“But this isn’t then. History doesn’t have to repeat itself. I’m not him.”

The powerful limbs keeping him trapped are shaking, but Az has always been a silent crier. It’s a skill he learned too young. “And what if I lose my temper? What if I flip, and kill you like I did them?”

“You won’t,” Lucien answers with a confidence that surprises even him. “You owed them nothing save death. You aren’t condemned to repeat what they did. You can choose to be better. And when that gets difficult,” he frees one hand to stroke Az’s cheek, his sharp features always so strangely comforting, “you’ll come to me. Because we both know I can take it.”

“You don’t know that,” Azriel whispers, half snarl, half whimper. “I’ve always tried to- I’m haven’t-”

“Then show me,” Lucien orders, quite calmly, though he’s half hard and his whole body is begging for destruction. “Show me what I’m getting into. No holding back, else I’m leaving and we’re done. You can mope here for the rest of your life.”

“You don’t-” Azriel begins to protest, but a yank to his leathers draws him up short.

“I know exactly what I’m getting into. So hurry up and give it to me.”

There are a few fragile seconds of hesitation, the shadows stilling. And then they bristle, what feels like lightning rippling through the darkness. The waiting is over.

He snaps, and Lucien welcomes the devastation.

Face racked up against freezing stonework, he is powerless as strong limbs strip his sparse clothing from him, rendering him naked in a matter of seconds. Breath and logic and control abandon him as rough, calloused hands crush his cock all whilst the body of a trained Illyrian warrior throws its full weight against him. Knocking the air from his lungs, the sensation of suffocation is intoxicating.

All he craves is _more_. And Azriel, monster he claims to be, knows exactly how to deliver.

Deft fingers that can torture the darkest secrets from the toughest agents tangle in his hair, knotting close to his inflamed scalp. He has only to whine pathetically to bring a sharp tug to those hands, to have his long, beautiful hair treated like shit as it is yanked to the edge of breaking, his neck snapping back. He screams, and even the oppression of shadows cannot silence him.

The hand on his cock has him achingly hard, no kindness in that touch as it practically de-sexes him with so harsh a grip. He bows into it, keening for both mercy and execution. Only this can silence the monsters of his past and the demons tied to his bones. Only this is worth dying for.

“Az,” he mumbles, delirious with pain as nails hard as steel scrape his back, and- fuck. Az shoves himself, twice as hard as he himself is, inside of him, no warning or preparation whatsoever. It rips into him, entrenching his ears in screams he soon realises are his own as the excruciation only intensifies. Az does not hold back, one elbow and forearm keeping him smashed against the wall, the other keeping cruel watch other his cock as he slams into his ass, no room for gentleness here.

Sobbing, both from arousal and pain, Lucien is no longer a man but a mess. He disintegrates internally and externally, his knees giving way so his lover has to keep him standing, his heart a bleeding cavity inside his chest. It dredges up more memories than either of them care to admit; Terrible flashbacks to midnights spent thrown across bathtubs, drug-like memories of years spent pining and despising himself. Yet here he knows one word will bring it all shattering to a halt. It is a kind of freedom he cannot describe to any other, but it is the only place he has ever found this kind of exorcism.

“Stop,” he hisses, just like back then. It isn’t Az touching him in those shadows, but all the others, every unfeeling body he has thrown himself to in offering, as if he is only built to sacrifice. “Stop, please. Stop, I can’t-” Tears choke his words, everything flooding back now, everything hitting him all at once as the pace of someone penetrating him only drives harder, faster.

But it is Azriel by his side, not them, and every time his body aches with the past and the present he knows he finally got to choose this. Every night spent enshrouded in darkness has somehow cleansed him of another, fouler world spent in the arms of someone there was no one word for. As Az strains his hair to the small of his back, he is overwhelmed by then and now, here and there, and he comes this time without the shame of pleasure.

The orgasm is blinding to the darkness, but recalls many other times when he could not close his eyes enough. Andras’s brief kindness wasn’t long enough to heal this. The distant memory of the girl he spelled the end of has never been enough to endure. A thousand High Lords and nobles haven’t smothered the shame of giving himself so pitifully to Tamlin. But this, this remembering of pain, but this time with chosen pleasure, affords him some shard of relief. And behind him, the quivering breath of Azriel speaks of the other’s release, the chance to exorcise the need for horrors, all whilst being able to choose. Having someone who is not a victim for it.

Once he is empty of the other, Lucien falls to his knees. Everything feels immaterial, dissociated, because even if this is a ritual of banishment, it takes everything out of him. He is a shivering worshipper at the shrine of his own confusion, bowed to the damp walls, but a warm body curls behind him. Az wraps his arms to his waist, cautious but close. “Can I stay?” He asks, and Lucien nods. In this room of shadows, they both can nurse their scars.


End file.
